It is so easy to criticise the BBC, and too often the corporation makes it all too easy. Executive payoffs, Savile, McAlpine, mismanagement of public money (£100 million written off on a failed digital project) — it provides regular ammunition to its enemies. Little wonder the BBC is accused of being too big, too complex and too difficult to manage.
When criticised, the responses are mostly too defensive or too threatening. This all points to a mindset that is out of touch and inward-looking. Until the arrival of John Birt, the BBC was oblivious to the political shift heralded by Thatcherism. In today’s economic climate, with the government struggling to get the nation’s balance sheet back into shape, the BBC gives the impression of being immune to outside forces.
The corporation, which must publicly and politically justify its existence every ten years, cannot allow this to become a fatal flaw. The BBC is too important, culturally and commercially, to be allowed to continue to self-harm. I would die in a ditch for the BBC and its monopoly funding. But it has to change.
Public institutions that do not live or die by a profit-and-loss account have to invent other ways to measure their progress. These performance indicators usually boil down to acquiring more “turf”, plus, of course, increased public funding. No institution, I wager, has ever scored better in this respect than the British Broadcasting Corporation. It has survived regular charter reviews, a full-frontal ideological attack (the Thatcher years) and endless inquiries (Annan and Peacock, to name just two). As a result of its Darwinian survival instinct, it now has a guaranteed annual income of about £3.7 billion. Moreover, it has gone forth and multiplied, occupying sizeable chunks of the new, valuable radio and television digital spectrum and become a major free player online. Despite customary pleas of poverty, it has managed to absorb the costs of the World Service, the Welsh Fourth Channel and licence fee concessions for pensioners.
Meanwhile, the media landscape inhabited by the BBC is flourishing like never before. Sky, ITV, Channels 4 and 5, plus BT and hundreds of digital channels have transformed viewers’ choice, not to mention online services. At the onset of yet another charter review, this is the right time for even its most committed supporters to ask the BBC how it can adapt and continue to justify such unfashionable and, some would argue, unnecessary public intervention in such a dynamic market.
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Is it too much to hope that the BBC, just for once, could volunteer a radical rationalisation of its size, scope and complexity? To do so would not be a “denial of the faith”. It would disarm its enemies, transform political perceptions and enhance its independence for the foreseeable future. I can dream, can’t I? I have twice worked at the corporation, as controller of BBC1 and chairman, and remain a believer in it, so I feel qualified to understand its great strengths — and weaknesses.
The case in favour is that, with secure and adequate public funding through the licence fee, the BBC is able to keep the rest of the domestic sector “honest”.
At its best, the BBC’s guaranteed monopoly funding enables it to take risks, avoid patronising audiences in search of ratings, and provide a rich diet of British-made programmes for British viewers with one purpose: to educate, inform and entertain. It is a key engine for growth in our valuable creative industries. It is a bulwark against foreign ownership of our media, which is proceeding apace: Channel 5 is US-owned as are many of our most successful independent producers.
There are worrying signs that the BBC is playing its usual hand in the charter review process. Reams of strategy papers, “evidence” and, somewhat disingenuously, cost comparisons with Sky and others, are pouring out of Broadcasting House. These will conveniently ignore that the public has a choice in the private sector but no choice in paying for the BBC — and will warn of Armageddon if the BBC loses so much as one of its activities.
John Whittingdale, the culture secretary, has convened a panel to answer the many questions the BBC puts huge effort into avoiding. What is the purpose of a public sector broadcaster in an age of almost intimidating choice? What can it give up in order to remain relevant and to have enough scale to matter? How should it be funded?
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The future of the BBC can only be secured (with the licence fee) if the corporation embarks on a fundamental justification of all its myriad activities. It is telling that these questions now have to be researched by a panel of politically appointed outsiders. As an old BBC hand myself, the questions to which I want answers are: Does the BBC really need four digital TV channels? Does the BBC News Channel represent value for money? If so, should it be online only? Should Radios 1 and 2 and maybe 5 be privatised? Should the BBC give up all in-house television drama, light entertainment and documentary production?
Should online viewing and listening be encrypted and should the licence fee include an optional online supplement to unlock online services?
Is it fair to competitors that the BBC promotes radio programmes on its TV channels and vice versa, giving it a massive advantage?
Impartial news should be at the core of the BBC’s future. But the BBC must be able to answer how privately funded ITN manages to service three national networks on a fraction of the BBC’s news resources.
The BBC’s enemies would like to see it reduced simply to an elitist ghetto, redressing a narrow market failure, which they define as niche, uncommercial, unpopular programming.
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There is market failure in today’s burgeoning media space. That failure is in risk-taking and innovation and it affects every genre from drama to documentaries.
The BBC is paid for by everyone and everyone should get value at some time from some of its services. So it’s yes to Strictly — highly original, high class, popular family entertainment — but no to The Voice, as unoriginal a format as ever I saw.
In the cut-throat world of the private sector, risk-taking is hard to find because advertisers and shareholders expect immediate results. The BBC has none of these problems. It has a monopoly source of revenue, so experimenting and failing is not punished financially.
Its mission must be to strive at all times in all genres to take risks. It is not a badge of shame to lose share of audience, provided that it can produce wonderfully compelling popular programmes such as Strictly, Bake Off and Masterchef.
A much smaller BBC would be simpler to manage and more efficient. It would present less of a threat to exciting, innovative media markets. In short, it would be a much smaller target for those who do not believe in the idea of the BBC for ideological or commercial reasons.
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No doubt I will be branded a heretic for departing from BBC orthodoxy. But I want the BBC to survive. It is a most valuable national asset, recognised the world over. I just wish those responsible for charter review would get out more.